


Hood River Gin

by JeanLuciferGohard



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Dark, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, F/F, F/M, Multi, Threesome - F/F/M, Torture, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, again it's not like GRAPHIC graphic it's just that ripley has shit to do and it's not nice, and misuse of its spell list, anna ripely would like to remind you to please adhere to the submission guidelines, just...not...healthy in general
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-15 01:25:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19285261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanLuciferGohard/pseuds/JeanLuciferGohard
Summary: Sylas has only been dead for a little less than five years, and Delilah will not, or cannot, tell him exactly what they owe to the one who brought him back. Sylas is dead, but Delilah is, was always the only thing really worth living for. He watches his wife sleep, and whispers into the dark:I will give you whatever you ask, only keep her safe.Anna Ripley is keeping secrets.And Sylas cannot speak the name of God, cannot pray, but the Lord of the Rotted Tower will always accept a secret.Or:Just what did they throw Anna in jail for, anyway





	Hood River Gin

> _People say friends don't destroy one another_

> _what do they know about friends_

> _\- "Game Shows Touch Our Lives", The Mountain Goats_

* * *

I.

_Later, Anna will not remember exactly what_ ** _happened_** _, only that she was staring intently down at the gun,_ _that there was a smooth line from her shoulder to her fingertips, sighting along the barrel, and the grip slotted against her palm like it was always supposed to be there, until suddenly it wasn’t. She will remember seeing her hand hit the floor. She will not remember the moment of loss, only that she was, at first, more concerned with the waste of materials than anything else, that it barely hurt at first, that she had to drive her remaining fist into the side of her leg to dredge up enough pain to break through the shock. She will remember swallowing, but not finding, a healing potion, and Anna will never remember what, exactly, went wrong, no matter how many times she rakes through her notes. But before that:_

Sylas has only been dead for a little less than five years, and Delilah will not, or cannot, tell him exactly what they owe to the one who brought him back. Sylas is dead, but Delilah is,  _ was always _ the only thing really worth living for. He watches his wife sleep, and whispers into the dark:

_ I will give you whatever you ask, only keep her safe.  _

Anna Ripley is keeping secrets.

And Sylas cannot speak the name of God, cannot pray, but the Lord of the Rotted Tower will always accept a secret.

So Sylas watches.

He learns that Anna Ripley favours severely-cut coats, in dull tawnys and greys. She owns one skirt, but never wears it, and the dark wool trousers she wears instead  _ look _ expensive, but aren’t. She keeps two vials of a bright, green compound he suspects is acid in the wide leather belt that supports them. She smokes, rarely, from a long, thin pipe she keeps inside her most severe coat, the one that, taken along with the harsh, forward-thrust angles of her face, makes her look like a hawk straining against some tether only she can see. Juniper trees remind her of the place she was born. Nothing reminds her of home. 

Sometimes, when she thinks he can’t see her, she watches back, with a strange, searching expression.

Sylas watches her work, sees the fevered light behind her eyes, and the trace of flushed colour high across her cheekbones, and her expression, a kind of savage joy so complete it looks almost like peace, and thinks,  _ oh. _

Perverse, certainly, but the banality of it is somehow...disappointing. 

But.

Anna does not  _ touch _ her subjects. She never touches the boy, and first he thinks she’s simply trying to hide her sordid habits, but.

But.

She does not go back to her room, after. She does not come to them, and at length, Sylas  _ has _ seen Anna Ripley come, and it is a hard, snarling thing, a furious, bitten-off cry and her whole body clenching like a fist. The edges of it do not align with the Ripley who works. 

Sylas watches, and the next she  _ works _ on the boy, he blacks out, grey-faced and broken, at which point Anna produces a pocket watch from somewhere within her severe, hawkish coat, glancing back and forth between it and the boy with her harsh, hawkish face drawn into the softest expression Sylas has ever seen from her. It still looks mostly like disappointment. She tips a potion down his throat, and massages, clinically, until he swallows, and looks all the while like a jaded tutor, about to sigh and tell him what potential he might have if he would only  _ apply _ himself.

“Sometimes, Percival, I worry about you,” she says conversationally, clasping her hands over one thigh, ankle thrown up on the opposite knee. “You’re clearly very gifted, but I really don’t know how much longer you can survive this.”

The colour bleeds slowly back into his face. Anna stands, glancing again at her watch.

“Almost a minute longer than last time. Your body’s starting to break down. Still,” she continues, marking something down in the little book she keeps next to the examination table, “most people go insane by now, so you’re doing extraordinarily well, all things considered. Quite a credit to your upbringing. Your parents must be so proud.”

Sylas watches the boy thrash and snarl against the straps while Anna shakes her head and chuckles darkly, before dealing him a vicious blow to the temple, leaving him momentarily stunned.

“That’s enough.” She cracks her knuckles. 

“We’re going to start again. Try to focus, this time.”

 

_ II. _

_ Afterwards, Anna will watch the blood slow from a gush to a sluggish trickle. She will try, and fail, to remember what clerics they haven’t yet killed. Anna will wash her own blood from her fingers, so they won’t slip, and thread a needle, and set the edge of a bone saw against the flat of what used to be her hand, and she will stay locked in this position for a full minute, breathing hard, before realizing the absurdity of a one-handed self-amputation. But there will be a good inch, maybe more, that needs to be taken down before she can pull enough skin over it to make a clean stump. Anna will tap the flat of her saw against her leg, and bare her teeth, only just restrain herself from throwing it across the room. Anna will set about finding someone with at least enough skill to cut bone. But first: _

She could almost be beautiful like this. 

Anna Ripley might  _ almost _ be beautiful like this, Delilah thinks, Anna might almost pass for lovely, the way that you’d admire a well-made knife, wearing nothing but a razor-edged, singular focus that sharpens the angles of her face, polishes them like a cut gemstone, and the shadowy tangle of her hair spilling around her shoulders. If she were anyone else, it could be  _ devastating _ .

But she’s clearly trying to  _ win _ something, and Delilah refuses to give her the satisfaction, even as her lips part on a ragged gasp, cunt fluttering weakly through her _ – _

Gods, how many times has she come now? She can’t remember.

Anna would, of course she would, but Anna Ripley is a mean-spirited bitch with no  _ manners, _ even here.

She feels  _ raw _ , like an exposed nerve, too hot and it’s too  _ much _ , and Delilah is too bonelessly exhausted and wrung out to do anything but watch the charcoal shape of Anna’s head bob between her shaking thighs. Her own hair, damp with sweat, is a red-black smear across her neck, spilling out onto the pillows like her throat’s been cut, and her hand shakes as she tries to push it back, and Sylas catches it and mouths softly at the inside of her wrist, his lips mercifully cool. 

Sylas understands. Sylas has always understood.

He kisses her palm, then  _ blurs _ , shifting too fast to see, pulling Anna up and back away from her, pinned like a moth against the white expanse of his chest, knees splayed out to either side of his legs, and Sylas, gods love him, Sylas  _ understands,  _ Sylas slides the arm wrapped across Anna’s ribs up just a little, balancing the weight of her breasts on his forearm; Sylas forces her thighs wider, to cast a more pleasing shadow across the muscle; Sylas coaxes Anna’s hand into his hair so Delilah can watch the flex of her bicep. 

Anna Ripley has arms like a bowman, ribs like a starving dog.

Sylas bites down.

Her own neck throbs in weak sympathy; Delilah presses her palm against the ghost of an old bruise tucked sweetly into the hollow of her throat.

“Make her come,” she orders, ghosting her fingers across the inside of one thigh, up through the slick mess between them, and Sylas watches, nodding into Anna’s bleeding neck with a low growl. There’s a dull, wet glint along the edge of her mouth, evidence of her earlier handiwork; Sylas pulls away from her neck long enough to lick the taste of his wife off the hinge of Anna’s jaw before sinking his teeth back into the vein. 

Anna Ripley is barely a person, just a dark, muscled abstraction that twists and sneers, riding Sylas’s fingers with the fervor of a long-held grudge, breaking over the edge of orgasm with a wrathful, strangled yelp, like she’s outraged, somehow, that her body could betray her like this, do something  _ she _ didn’t command it to. Anna shoves herself away almost immediately after, not even waiting to catch her breath before rolling off the edge of the bed to begin collecting her things.

“Bitch,” Anna mutters, and Delilah laughs while Sylas crawls back up the bed and nuzzles into her neck. He curls around her, tucking her beneath his chin, and just for a moment, just for a split second there is something  _ wrong _ about it, and she starts _ – _

And Sylas strokes her hair, while his chest rises and falls steadily under her cheek.

From the foot of the bed, Anna snorts, shirt still undone, head cocked, birdlike, to one side.

“Are you doing that on purpose? How sweet.” she croons nastily.

Delilah flicks her fingers, a languid, treacly motion, and Anna doubles over, teeth bared, eyes blown wide with pain.

“It’s a little slow,” she gasps, pulling herself upright with a grimace, “Less than twelve breaths in a minute, and a man your size would be too dizzy to stand. You’re holding the inhales too long.”

“Don’t let us keep you, Doctor.” Delilah purrs, blue sparks flickering between her fingers.

The door creaks open. Closes.

“Are you quite sure we still need her, my love?” Sylas rumbles into her hair. “Not that our Anna doesn’t have her charms, but the woman is _ – _

“An impertinent bitch?” she chuckles, “I’m afraid we do, darling. At least a little longer. Alas that I’m no engineer.” Delilah strokes her knuckles down his chest, which rises and falls, steadily, if a little quicker than before. Her husband says nothing, but his arms tighten around her waist. Delilah pushes herself up, takes his face between her hands “Sylas? Sylas, what is it?”

He frowns. “There is something about Anna Ripley that I don’t understand. I thought I’d learned what it was, but,” he trails off. Delilah watches the shape of his tongue running over his teeth behind pursed lips; there is blood there, caught in the fullness of his lower lip. “I’m not sure that I do, now. I don’t like it.”

“Then we shall have to pry her open for your examination. There are ways, my love. Still,” she hums, sliding leisurely back down the length of this body, “it’ll be a shame to lose the diversion. She’s a novelty, if nothing else.”

Sylas kisses her temple.

“I’ll find you another.”

 

_ III. _

_ Months later, in a rented room with a draft, Anna Ripley will have in her possession a stump of a hand that aches in the cold, a truly obscene quantity of black powder, and a ream of smooth, glossy paper. She will carefully peel away a single of sheet of it, and write a letter to an old colleague at the Royal College of Surgeons at Rexxentrum, which she will stare at for longer than she will ever admit, before burning. She will turn, instead, to her notebook, and review old drafts from the relevant portions of her body of work, which at the time will include: “Traumatic instability of the wrist—diagnosis, classification, and pathomechanics (794, PD)”; “Suture techniques for tendon repair; a comparative review (796, PD)” and “Biomechanical and Parametric Modeling of Human Anatomy—the role of cadaver dissection (793, PD)”. Six months later, it will include a patent for a revolver and a long-range rifle, archived at the Library of the Cobalt Soul. Anna will consider, briefly, attempting to find a cadaver lab. She will rob a grave instead. Anna will sketch the shape of a hand, and burn it, and sketch again, and burn it, and sketch again, and consider plating the fingertips in gold, to decrease arcane interference while casting. She will purchase aluminum for lightness, and steel for strength, and bentonite clay for the molds. _

_ But first: _

It’s later, much later after they lose the boy, and take his sister, and Delilah loses months indulging the novelty of caring for something, and loses more, once the novelty is gone, working out the practicalities of putting the girl to good use, before there is time to attend to the matter of Anna Ripley’s secrets. 

She’s going to miss it, Delilah muses. Almost nobody talks  _ back _ anymore, and there’s such a pure, uncomplicated joy in the back-and-forth, in baiting Anna Ripley to watch her snarl and posture, and if it were anyone else, anyone but Sylas, she would be happy to let it lie, walk away and let the bitch keep her secret, but.

Whatever it is, it worries him.

Delilah presses a copper piece to her lips, and breathes through the sting, and _focuses,_ while, six rooms away, Anna lays her pocket watch down on the table before her, and mutters the incantation that will have to be good enough until she has the time to _really_ fix it.

The inside of her mind is  _ sudden _ , a claustrophobic immediacy like hot wax in the split second before it’s cooled. Like cutting yourself shaving.

Anna doesn’t think of the loss, just stares at the stump, and casts again, and again, and again, shaping the spectral hand she’s conjured into the correct shape, the correct size to fit the abrupt end of her wrist. It takes her the better part of forty-five minutes, and her jaw, working back and forth in the dark of her room as she marks down the results of these iterations, clicks like a broken clock. She stands. Starts again.

Delilah tastes copper, and she can’t quite tell if it’s the coin at her lips, or blood.

Anna stands, casts the cantrip, and casts it, and recasts it, and marks down in her book how many times it takes before the latent migraine mounting behind her eyes becomes too much to bear. Before the hammering nausea of it echoing in her own skull forces Delilah to pull away from her mind, lips tight with pain, thinking that no  _ competent _ mage would push so hard. Nobody in their right mind would even think to try. Delilah grimaces, rubbing exhaustedly at her temple, and catches the last thread of a thought as the spell ends; Anna thinks only of the  _ work _ , that in the end, she can hold the Mage Hand for roughly two hours, or 120 consecutive incantations, and that this, while untenable for continual use, will at least make one or two things easier. In bursts. 

Anna examines the hairs on the back of her remaining hand, perfectly vertical in the chill air. She goes back to work. 

Again.

Delilah presses the coin to her lips, and Anna Ripley stands before her forge, and the inside of her mind feels like testing the edge of a knife with your thumb just to see how much a cut would hurt. Like watching the sun rise after staying awake all night for no good reason.

It feels almost manic, insomniac-gritty, and there is a deep ache in between her shoulder blades and in the stump of her hand that Anna is ignoring, but which Delilah can feel like an enormous hand pressing down. There is a bottle of gin at her elbow, and the inside of her mouth, and consequently Delilah’s mouth, tastes a little like medicine, and a lot like paint-thinner. She is sweating, and ignoring it, and nursing a migraine, and ignoring it, hunched over a crucible that the sickly blue light of her mage hand can only  _ just _ hold. Anna thinks it’s almost the same colour that veins are, seen under the skin, and Delilah brushes the comparison away brusquely, and tries to go deeper.

The spell fades.

Anna thinks only of the work.

Again.

Anna Ripley is looking down at a man. His name is Chaunhe Denari, and he is an alchemist, suffering both from the effects of chronic heavy-metal poisoning and Anna’s knife, dissecting out the meat of his thigh. 

The inside of her mind feels...not still, but  _ quiet _ , a soft clockwork whirr of everything working just as it should. Anna peels away a long stripe of muscle, and knows, like breathing, exactly how it would fit back into its place if she had any inclination to put it back. The knowledge is comforting, and there is  _ some _ pleasure in it, but it’s somewhere in the back of her, buried down past a litany of names and anatomical diagrams. Mainly, she thinks of ratios of pearl ash and nitre, and what, specifically, Chaunhe Denari sold to a young man with white hair some six weeks ago. She gestures idly with the blade, half-visible in her spectral hand, and repeats a question.

Delilah pushes past what Anna  _ thinks _ , faster than before, and she almost,  _ almost _ has it, the thing that she’s  _ hiding, _ Delilah stands with her head bowed against the outside wall of Anna’s laboratory with a copper piece tucked into her palm, and pushes deeper, and reaches _ – _

Anna stiffens, snapping rigidly taut, and her cantrip drops like a body off a balcony, guttering and winking out of existence entirely. The knife falls, opening a ragged seam along Chaunhe Denari’s throat on its way to the floor.

“Can I help you?” Anna drawls into the empty air, while, on the table, he gurgles and goes still.

Delilah curses softly, once, before drawing her shoulders back and sweeping into the room with studied carelessness. 

“There have been delays, Doctor. We’d like to understand why.” she says, with a pointed look at Anna’s terminated wrist.

“Several, yes.” Anna snaps back. Her sleeves are rolled to the elbow, forearms and waistcoat both faintly bloody. Anna crosses her arms, and the motion stutters in the middle, hurriedly reversing direction to bring her left arm on top before her ghostly blue right hand winks defiantly back into existence. “I’ve made my material requirements quite clear, and when they’re not met, yes, there are delays.”

“You’ve been given what you asked for.”

“What I  _ asked _ for was a dedicated team of casters to provide a continual source of magical essence for the distillation. What I’m  _ settling _ for are materials which can be broken down into that essence, provided they have the required arcane and physical properties which I have  _ specified _ . Several times. And when my specifications aren’t  _ met _ , then I can either spend additional time refining flawed materials, or I can proceed with a distillation that  _ will _ fail, and you can mine more fucking Whitestone to replace it.”

She stoops to retrieve her knife, and Delilah raises one hand, twists the ring on her middle finger, a long, iron spike that stretches from knuckle to nail bed, and Anna  _ stops _ , halfway to the ground, caught in an agonizing half-crouch and straining uselessly against the arcane hold.

“Don’t forget who’s paying you, Doctor. I would expect a little more courtesy.”

“Really? You should’ve thought about what it would do to our working relationship before you and your husband decided to fuck me,  _ Delilah _ .” 

Delilah lowers her hand. Anna pushes herself back up, leaning heavily against the examination table. 

“Was that all you wanted?” she snaps, “A project update?”

Delilah doesn’t answer.

It’s Anna who breaks away first, hefting the corpse’s wrist in one hand before letting it fall with a disgusted noise. She unbuckles one of the straps holding the late alchemist, jerks it loose. Rips way another, and her body ends, right at the wrists, right hand wavering in and out, left flexing restlessly inside a worn leather glove. It throws the sinewy flex of her forearms into harsh relief, and there is almost no sound to break the taut silence until, at length, she sneers:

“How is it in there? Because I’ve heard it’s  _ awful _ . Made some poor boy at my court martial positively  _ sick _ .”

Delilah purses her lips. “I’ve felt worse.” 

Anna snorts. 

“From a teenager? I doubt that.”

“You aren’t substantially different.” Delilah drawls back, thumbing idly at her wedding ring as she watches the other woman’s back, briefly entertaining the thought of fucking her, forcing her to drop her guard that way. If nothing else, she’s a handsome woman, even if it won’t be quite right without Sylas there.

“And where  _ is _ our dear Cassandra?” Anna quips over her shoulder.

“Attending to some business on our behalf. You needn’t concern yourself with it.” Delilah hears herself say, and thinks,  _ if only. _ It wouldn’t work, not really, because Anna never  _ really _ drops her guard when they  _ do _ take her to bed. It’s one of the few things Delilah really likes about her, the attention to detail. Anna folds herself over the body, a long, vulturine sweep of broadcloth and linen, and Delilah drags the edge of her thumbnail against her lower lip.

“How very obliging of her. Do you want this?” Anna hefts the dead man up, now loosed, up onto one shoulder with a grunt, and Delilah permits herself just a moment to enjoy watching the muscles tense in her thighs. “He’s no good to me anymore, and I wasn’t sure how many you needed for your little sewing project downstairs.”

It would be difficult, Delilah thinks. Hard to keep clear-headed enough to cast, in the face of Anna Ripley’s single-minded focus. On the other hand, someone with such a singular focus wouldn’t have the presence of mind to fight it off...

It would be difficult. But not impossible.

“Well?” Ripley drawls, and Delilah knows, even without the spell, that Anna Ripey is thinking that her back isn’t what it used to be. Her legs shake, just a little, under the strain. Delilah shakes her head.

Anna snorts, “Another one for the acid pits, then,” and discards him with a careless shrug. Chaunhe Denari hits the ground with an ugly  _ crunch _ . Anna Ripley cracks her neck with an uglier one. It’s cold in her lab, a pervasive chill hanging in the air like a corpse on a gibbet, except for the narrow stripe of chipped flagstones directly in front of her forge, where the heat is almost unbearable. It’s not even the first, not even the  _ tenth _ time she’s fucked someone with a corpse in the corner of the room, Delilah muses. It occurs to her briefly that this should be horrifying, but the dread never comes. She smoothes down her skirts, and instead says:

“There is one more thing I’d like you to look at, Doctor.” She gestures vaguely in the direction of her left hip, “It isn’t healing.”

Anna Ripley raises her eyebrows, purses her thin, chapped lips. “I suppose you could be anemic,” she says, flatly, looking pointedly at Delilah’s neck, smudged a dull purple in a trail of ragged splotches from shoulder to jaw, still visible over the collar of her dress. “Take a potion. Tell your husband to control himself.”

“Still,” Delilah murmurs, “I’d like you to look.”

For a long moment, Anna Ripley says nothing, only stares, with a hard, searching look and a wild light behind her eyes, and Delilah stares back, uncowed. At length, Ripley gestures to the low table with its still-blooded restraints. 

“Go on, then.”

The thing is, it really  _ isn’t _ healing. At least not well. Perched delicately on the edge of the table, Delilah draws her skirts up smoothly, settling them high around her waist, and there is a lurid gouge dug out of widest part of her leg, a little larger than a gold piece and red, and weeping. Its edges are neat, and square, and surgically precise, and crusted with salt from a crystal tank currently buried four miles underneath Marquet. Contingency plans, not that it’s any of Ripley’s business.

“I did wonder why, when you asked me to do this, but I’m guessing you still won’t tell me.” Anna remarks idly, uncannily perceptive, as she probes ungently at the edges of the wound with her gloved hand. “But is it working?”

The leather feels cool, slightly tacky with blood, and the mage hand, splayed out on Delilah’s other thigh, feels like nothing at all.

“You’re quite right, Doctor. I won’t,” Deliah purrs, and Anna rises to the bait like a dream, sneering with affront while Delilah cants her hips forward, and it’s so easy to just tip her head back and tip her bruised throat back for display, palming the coin into her hand and Anna’s mage hand feels like nothing, like a missed step, like the impulse to throw yourself from high places, like  _ nothing _ , only somehow also shockingly cold and crackling with static between her legs and the inside of her mind feels like a fist to the gut and Deliah pushes further and further into the awful, snarling tangle of it and it’s  _ right _ —she’s  _ right there _ , and somewhere, Delilah sees her own face, lips parted with ecstatic triumph, and as Anna Ripley breaks open, everything

crashes

down.

 

_ IV. _

_ It will  _ **_hurt_ ** _ , and Anna Ripley will be no stranger to hurt, will know the shape of it better than her own face, but it will hurt more than anything ever has when she fits the completed hand to her wrist. She will pant into the wallpaper, and push it away, and think only of the work. She will sluice down the bathroom with lye and boiling water until not even the slightest trace of pink remains, and order dinner to her room. Anna will force herself to cut a thin, overcooked steak with her new right hand. She will drop the knife twice. In the next six weeks, Anna Ripley will change the dressings twice daily. Once daily. Once a week. She will adjust. She will attune. But first: _

Anna Ripley is afraid, and Anna Ripley is a  _ liar _ , he can smell it on her, over the dust and bone of Whitestone’s dungeons; it smells like juniper and sweat, medicinal and salty and the woman never did taste right, did she, something in the blood always just a little too sharp. He can smell the blood, too.

Something pinches his lower lip.

She’s hunched, head low, wings clipped, mud on her dark wool trousers, the ones which look expensive, but aren’t. Anna Ripley doesn’t look up when they enter, just runs her tongue over her teeth and says, almost conversationally,

“You know, usually, you’d let somebody stew a little longer. Have you not done this before?”

There are things he doesn’t remember: teeth, what teeth feel like in your mouth, he can’t remember that, or whether Sylas Briarwood was the kind of man who would strike someone for impertinence, when he was alive, if he would hit  _ hard _ , like he wants to now, throat thick with the effort of restraint and the numbing venom beading on the tips of his fangs. He can hear the creaking of his knuckles, and Anna Ripley breathing faster than she’s letting on, and the soft rasp when Delilah lays her hand on his arm and squeezes  _ not yet. _

The shape of her quivers, a lighting-pale crackle as Deliah steps past him, lips pressed into a tight, hard line.

“Why were you fleeing Wildemount, Doctor Ripley?”

“Why were you?” Anna mutters from between her knees.

Delilah’s hand ripples, a quick, crumbling gesture like crushing a slip of paper between her fingertips and thumb, drawn down and away from her side. Anna grunts, shoulders flinching against the sudden pain.

“I was court-martialed,” she pants, “You knew that when you agreed to work  _ with _ me to get us all out.”

“Why?”

Delilah’s hand ripples again.

“ _ Why _ , Anna?”

He remembers parties, months before their engagement, and what it felt like when Delilah would tip her head against his jaw to pass judgement on some unfortunate across the room, and the arch, glacial coolness in her voice when she did, and it used to make him laugh, despite himself, and she sounds almost like that, now, chin tipped up at the same imperious angle. Almost, but colder, and paler, and sweating almost imperceptibly from the exertion of her spells, a thin sheen on her temple that Sylas imagines he still would’ve noticed when he was alive. Everything in him aches to fix it. He doesn’t move.

“Clearly you already have some suspicion, what exactly do you want me to say?” Anna Ripley keeps her head low, tounging at the nosebleed starting to dribble sluggishly down over her mouth.

“Did you kill my husband?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Anna murmurs, looking up through her hair, fallen away from its usual knot in places, hanging limply in her face. She looks older under the torchlight, shadows clinging thickly to the hollow angles of her jaw.

“You do.” Delilah traces her nails with the pad of her thumb, holds them up for inspection. Her wedding band glints in the low light. “Did you?”

Anna Ripley chuckles, low and ugly, as she pushes herself upright. “There’s no way to be certain, not without seeing the symptoms firsthand, but...yes. Yes, I think I did.” Her head lolls weakly to one side, and Anna Ripley’s eyes are glassy, unfocused, but still,  _ always _ burning with that awful feverish light. “I’m surprised you didn’t realize sooner, all things considered. The worst part is, I don’t think I meant to. Not specifically. Shame, really, considering recent events.”

His mouth tastes like blood, or the memory of blood, body blurring and stretching without any thought, any effort at all, surging forward towards the bars of her cell and _ – _

Stopping, breaking like a wave against Delilah’s hand, pressed back against him as she murmurs “ _ Sylas _ .”

Sylas Briarwood would’ve done anything for her, he remembers he would do anything for her, but Sylas Briarwood  _ died _ , and he wants  _ blood _ and the air tastes like gin and rot over his tongue as Sylas pants, hound-hungry, and holds himself still.

“Yes, Sylas, be  _ good _ .” Anna is afraid, juniper and sweat, even as she flicks her hair back with her one good hand, sneering through the bars. “I understand that your primary function is as some sort erotic furniture for your wife, but I’m sure you know to  _ listen. _ ”

“I suggest you explain,” he hears himself rumble, “Before I forget.”

Gin and salt, and Anna smoothes her crumpled coat over her hips, and says “Arcane Diseases. We _ –I– _ was developing them. For the  _ war effort _ , you understand. The _ glory _ of the Empire,” Her mouth twists mockingly, and she looks away, before continuing, “One of the few legitimate trials we ran before my... _ associates _ abandoned the project was on boar. You’d be surprised,” she gestures vaguely, wrist circling, “the musculature, and the circulatory system is astonishingly similar to most humanoid races. Was up near Camoys. Your estate wasn’t far from there, am I right?”

Anna Ripley makes a noise, not quite a laugh, not quite a breath, and her thin, hard mouth twists again into something that isn’t really a smile, “They were exposed,” she murmurs, “to the  _ project _ , and it’s the nature of any disease that it’s not going to kill  _ everyone _ . Not necessarily, and not immediately. There’s almost always a few that survive as carriers. They were meant to have all been killed, but you know how it is with boar,” she shrugs, all mercenary nonchalance, “and insufficient funding. We ran out of time, ran out of money...they just let them go.”

He doesn’t remember dying.

Anna Ripley looks up, all innocence she’s barely even trying to fake and desperate, last-gasp, petty cruelty and concludes, “I don’t suppose you hunted much, Lord Briarwood?”

He doesn’t remember dying, but Sylas remembers his dogs, and the horses, and the woods and the scent of hot blood in the winter air and how Delilah used to conjure her own little hound out of the air to run beside them and it was somehow  _ dainty _ , the slender ghost-light of it, and he remembers shaking with fever, and remembers the cane he affected, then needed, and remembers that Delilah hated it, threatened to burn it as soon as he was well, remembers forcing himself to believe that she could make him well, remembers Delilah leaving, and sweating, alone, in their bed, and his own blood in his mouth and the crack of his knees against the floor, too weak to hold him up anymore, and being  _ alone _ , and the awful, yawning gulf of nothing to hold onto at night and remembers waking and  _ not _ remembering that she’d left for a cure, and the ache when he did and _ – _

His body blurs and stretches without any thought, any effort at all, surging forward, and catches Anna Ripley by the throat and crushes her against the bars.

“Do you have any  _ idea, _ ” he snarls, “what you  _ did _ to me?”

_ To her. _

“I’d love to hear all about it,” Anna croaks, straining for breath on tiptoes, “Do you have a quill I could borrow?”

He can hear the scrape as he tugs up, and Anna’s boots leave the floor. 

Her hand twitches, like Delilah’s does, like she’s trying cast something, even while she’s clawing desperately at his wrist, but _ – _

But not at his wrist, he realizes. Anna’s remaining hand strains back towards the edge of her own sleeve, drawing out a bit of wire, and he can hear, abruptly

_ If you kill me you’ll never know if I can fix you— _

“Really, Doctor? How transparent.” Delilah tuts, stepping up beside him.

Anna kicks and thrashes, and twists her wire into

_ Is it working? _

He wants blood, wants it to  _ hurt _ , but Delilah wants _ – _ he can see it, and his grips slackens, fraction by fraction, unable to deny her, even now. She always, he remembers, she always wanted to know everything. 

Anna Ripley gasps, heaving as she hits the floor.

“Talk,” he orders.

“My work, it’s _ – _ vampirism _ is _ an arcane disease, of _ – _ of a kind, and I could _ – _ not immediately, but give  _ time _ , I might…”

“Could you.” Sylas intones dryly. Sprawled and heaving, Anna Ripley smells like gin and sweat and blood, and like she doesn’t know if she’s lying.

He doesn’t remember dying, only that Delilah wasn’t there. Wasn’t back yet, and sometimes, there’s  _ something _ when she looks at him, like a weight around her neck, like some shape too terrible to name; watery, a moving through depths, but not tears. She lays her hand on his chest, and whispers “Sylas…”

He doesn’t remember what a heartbeat felt like. Sylas takes his wife’s hand, and draws it away, thumb stroking over her over knuckles before the lack of his pulse can sink in, and slowly, nods.

“I look forward to continuing our work with you, Doctor Ripley.” Delilah purrs, “Don’t let us down.”

 

_ V. _

_ She will hire a ship, and a crew, and sign the contract for both with her new hand. She will draw up a different contract, and sign in it blood, and think, even as the non-weight of the demon Orthax settles into the back of her skull, that it seems a little cliche. Anna Ripley will snort, and tell herself that needs must. She will stand in a storm, and worry, briefly, about the salt and the articulation of the new joints, and remind herself that it doesn’t matter anymore. She will watch the black wisps drift around her fingers. Anna Ripley will jump, with her crew, from the rolling deck into the black water below, and it will be almost too cold to feel and the spray will be a slap across her face and the water will close over her head and she will not think of a hand, marble-white, glassy-nailed and cold on her throat. Her voice will be, for the rest of her life, hoarser than before, a low rasp and a rattling cough when the weather turns. She will ignore it, and think only of the work. _

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/gin_n_chthonic) or [tumblr](https://thefaustaesthetic.tumblr.com/) for more hollering about evil marrieds, the Mountain Goats, and a necromancy apologia


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